Mystery
by wwgost
Summary: Odd things are afoot in the Strife household, and Reno is in no shape to deal with it.  Warnings for language and a bit of third chapter smut.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimers**: I own nothing.

Mystery

* * *

_You woke up screaming aloud  
A prayer from your secret god  
You feed off our fears  
And hold back your tears, oh  
Give us a tantrum  
And a know it all grin  
Just when we need one  
When the evening's thin-_Sarah McLachlan, Building a Mystery

* * *

Reno had been asleep roughly an hour and a half when the ghost entered, and exited, the loft.

The first noise he heard, drifting on the edge of an antihistamine induced slumber, was a vaguely feline scratching on the closet door. His sleepy mind initially accused Marlene's cat Beetle, who they were taking care of that week. But no, the developmentally arrested beast sat at the foot of his and Cloud's bed, studiously licking its own asshole.

_Useful talent, that._

He sat up and stifled a cough. The space in the bed next to him was empty. Where was Cloud? Footsteps sounded in the hallway, quick and furtive like a child playing hide and seek. Wind blew outside, even though the weather was calm, and there was a chiming sound, as if someone had plucked one of the strings in the old fashioned doorbell outside.

He grasped the EMR more tightly, feeling both foolish and comforted as he did so. It wasn't the cat and he knew in his heart it wasn't Cloud; it was the swordsman's nature to be either there or not, there was nothing of this hiding on the edge of sight and hearing.

Reno crept down the hallway in silence to the kitchen. He flattened against the wall in an instinct honed by training, peering into a kitchen that appeared to be totally empty and…

"HOLY MOTHERFUCKING IFRIT'S BALLSACK! What the seven blazes FUCK are you doing in here?" When he was done cursing, Reno pressed his hand to his chest as if trying to stuff his heart back in there, dropped the EMR back to his side, and crossed 'electrocute boyfriend' off the evening's activities.

"I live here. Coincidentally enough, so do you. What's wrong?"

Bless Cloud, really. He never assumed Reno was being an idiot, even when he was. Just asked what was wrong and got two beers out of the refrigerator. He pulled up a couple of chairs to the kitchen bar and led a still shaken Reno to one. "Heard noises and well, it wasn't you and the cat was licking its ass. Something else was here."

"Yeah, you know, I couldn't sleep. But I didn't hear anything. What was it?"

Reno told him and took a deep drink from his beer, slowly coming down from the adrenaline high of having the living shit scared out of him.

"Wonder if something is going on in the area. Should we call Tseng? Speaking of, you should get that cough seen to. I'm betting he has something stronger than Nyquil."

Reno blew his nose and glared over the tissue. "Little late in the evening to be calling my boss over things that go bump in the night, babe." About that time his cell phone trilled. "I'll be damned."

"Most days, you are."

"Boss, we were just talking about you. Nooooooo…in a good way. Honest. Oh no, we are up, trust me. Yeah, that sounds about right. Thanks for the heads up." He met Cloud's questioning gaze. "Sweet. Seems the local gangs have some new tech. Details in the morning but basically it's a high tech noisemaker and we didn't even get the newest model. It's designed to separate and confuse troops. Tseng thinks some kids got hold of some older ones and were just out fucking around with them. Nuisance reports are in all over this sector, apparently."

The cat wandered out and made quick work of chasing down a dust bunny.

"And a fat lot of good you were in a crisis, ass-licker." Reno just wasn't letting that one go.

* * *

"You look like shit." Not one to use many words, Reno supposed his partner couldn't be bothered to mince them.

"Thanks." Only it came out more like "Thaggs." Reno mused that at least the lack of sleep got lost in the list of miserable illness symptoms. He claimed his place at the table with a box of lotion tissues and a bag of cough drops, and went outside with his mucous to grab some hot tea.

Cloud was right, he needed some drugs.

The Turks gathered around their commander to hear the latest bad news. Tseng dimmed the lights and clicked on the first slide; it looked for all the world like a shredded rubber ball or maybe a piece of wadded up trash.

"It's called a Screamer. Reno, I understand you had some experience with one last night?"

Everyone in the room paused to let the sentence "Reno had a screamer last night" pass through the twelve year old boy in their brains. Including Reno. Elena gave a very unladylike snort.

Sigh. He recounted the events of the night before and when done, Tseng nodded. "Random noises, then? Well, that was last year's model so to speak. The one they are using now on military and government personnel is much nastier. It stimulates an area of the brain that concentrates on memory, and so we hear voices and sounds we recognize. Loved ones, family members, friends, for example. Even if you know consciously that your dead Aunt Edith can't possibly be on the battlefield, the split second it takes for you to process the 'What The Fuck' thought can be fatal, for you and your cohorts. Does everyone understand the importance of this?"

Nods went around the room. Reno winced inwardly; the last thing they needed in their lives was Cloud pelting off after the voices of Zack and Aerith. Or, Gaia help them all, Sephiroth. Much as Reno loved him, he was a realist and knew that Cloud's ties to sanity weren't quite what every one else's were.

Best yet, he got to go home and explain this _without_ sounding like a condescending asshole. He blew his nose again and wished for the meeting to be over.

* * *

Two shots in the ass later, Reno felt moderately better but held onto his tissues and cough drops. The antibiotic shot had hurt, despite Tseng's assurance that it wouldn't. The commander had insisted on it however, after Reno's temperature had popped out at nearly 103.

And then to complete the dumbfuckery trifecta, Reno disobeyed a direct order to go home and rest. He decided to be a chicken shit and email the information on the Screamer to Cloud, hoping to come up with tactful wording for "And honey please keep in mind that all your dead people are actually dead, ok?" in the meantime.

He wasn't counting on it, though.

Another coughing fit brought a faint sheen of sweat to his forehead. He didn't even notice Rude standing in his office door until the large man picked him up bodily from his chair.

"I am taking you to your home. You will not leave there until you are well."

And that settled that. Once he had driven Reno back to the loft, Rude made sure he was in bed, brought him his laptop and phone, and poured him some juice. He obviously called Cloud on the way back to work because the blond tore back into the loft seemingly seconds later, full of piss and vinegar. Reno endured a lecture on going to work with an infection and so on and so forth, and went back to sleep.

Criminals were really going to have to come up with new technology when he got better. Really. He just didn't have the energy for this shit right now. He burrowed into the sheets and let the narctotics ease the cough out of his chest for a little while, stealing the wakefulness from his brain. But in his dreams, the Screamer sang.

X


	2. Chapter 2

Mystery, Chapter 2

* * *

Reno woke this time to the smell of soup and thanked Gaia, not for the first time, that he fell in love with a man who could cook. He staggered to the bathroom and coughed and hacked until he could pass into his lungs, then into the kitchen to eat.

"Feeling any better? Rude told me what you tried to pull."

"I know, I was awake for part of the lecture."

"Sorry, you just scare the shit out of me when you do that. Stop it."

"Feed me and I'll consider it." It was wonderful, chicken and noodles with spinach and ginger and…"Lemon? I never would have thought of that."

"Reno, to you, the kitchen is where I put the beer."

Point taken.

"I read the email that you sent with your dying breath from work. Disturbing. Not just for what they can do with it now, but what they can do in the future. A lot of really bad things can be based on that technology."

"Shit. Kinda wish you hadn't brought that up, babe. But you're right. That's a whole new can of worms."

"Bigger can than what could happen when I hear Zack waving me to the Lifestream?" he said around a mouthful of linguine.

Oops.

"Yeah, that thought crossed my mind." Silence. "Look, I had the living shit scared out of me last night by random footsteps and scratching and a doorbell. This is serious baggage they can dredge up and throw in people's faces, fuck with their heads…" He didn't mention the nightmare he'd had when he lay down that afternoon, born of worry and narcotics. Smoking a cigarette on the balcony, an fog had pressed in on all sides, blocking somehow his reentry to the loft; in the fog he could hear singing. The voices knew his name.

What if he'd been wide awake in the heat of battle and had that image sent into his mind? What if they all did, at once? The possibilities, as Cloud had pointed out earlier, were not good.

"And twice as bad when the baggage hasn't left the airport. Look, I'm not insulted, Reno. I get it. It's the first thing I thought when I read the email. And likely, the first thing you thought when you sent it."

Oops, again.

"But short of packing me off to a desert island, it's something we have to face. And you need to go back to bed, you're feverish." Cloud cleared the dishes; the conversation was apparently over.

* * *

Reno dreamed of fire.

In the small part of his mind that was still awake, he knew it was the fever, or maybe the drugs, but he knew fire. Felt it. Smelled it. He stood on the steps of a temple he had never seen before, unfamiliar symbols carved into the gates. He was running in slow motion, the desert air burning in his lungs. Unarmed, he felt naked. He knew, as thing were known only in dreams, that he must get into the temple before the doors closed, that there was something in there that he must have. Must _save_. Men were running after him to stop him but he slipped in just before the doors shut, leaving him in near darkness.

The inner doors stood open, the sanctuary lit only by a brazier.

Sephiroth turned; he was holding a child in his arms. "It's far too late. You came for this? It's far, far too late. Charming though. Chivalry always is. Go back to your dreams, Reno." Sephiroth's hand dropped to reveal cottony blond hair; the child turned his blue eyes toward Reno in silent question as fire leapt up from the brazier, plunging the sanctuary into a hell of flame. Charred flesh choked his nostrils.

His own screams of terror woke him.

* * *

"Now, what the _fuck_ was that?" Cloud actually had to hold the glass of water still for him to drink, his hand was shaking so hard, and was nearly as pale as Reno.

"I dreamed Sephiroth had you, well a child version of you, and burned you to death inside some temple while I watched."

"And you're worried about my head being fucked up."

Reno wished a little for those days when Cloud was still silent and brooding. "I'm still worried about that, just add mine to the list, ok?" He steadied his hand and took the glass.

"Could just be the drugs. That cough syrup is an opium derivative, I had wicked ass dreams last time I took it." Cloud didn't sound like he really believed it either. Beetle glared at them for interrupting his nap. The damned cat, as usual, had slept through the entire thing. "And I thought cats were supposed to be sensitive to mood shifts and shit like that? This one is just, I don't know…"

"Special. Barrett should have named him Loz. Can I have some bourbon?"

"Not with a fever." Beetle stretched and shoved his ass in Cloud's face. The animal seemed strangely proud of that part of his anatomy. Cloud was unimpressed; he'd seen better. "What do you think it means?"

"Sounds pretty transparent to me, yo. Almost lost you to Sephiroth before. And I'm afraid of you getting hurt again, with these Screamer things. Especially with me being sick as shit." The feeling of helplessness came back to him from the dream as the flames roared up between him and the child Cloud.

"I'm not a child now."

"I know that." Reno ran his hand through his hair, making a worse mess of the rat's nest there. He needed a shower; he could smell the sick-sweat on himself and he itched. "I don't think that's the point." The conversation had long passed the stage of being productive; they were just nitpicking at each other now and it was teetering dangerously on becoming a fight, just out of sheer peevishness. Reno got up and headed for the bathroom.

* * *

The steam of the shower was heaven in his battered sinuses and lungs, as the heated water washed away layers of fever sweat. He washed until his fingertips were pruned. Drying, he was actually dizzy with exhaustion.

Being sick was for the damn birds. He put on a fresh pair of pajama pants and crawled back in bed, foregoing his cough syrup for work email. Cloud entered with some juice and a cup of tea. "Sorry about earlier. I'm just being a whiny bastard, I guess."

Reno patted the bed for his lover to sit next to him. Cloud went one better and leaned down into an embrace. Reno decided he'd checked enough work emails for the day. "Yeah, hell of a time for the bad guys to get motivated. Apparently, Tseng and crew haven't made much headway. And maybe it's just inactivity, fever, drugs, whatever, but something just feels…off."

The lay for a while in a silent agreement.

Cloud looked up from the circle of Reno's arms, checking his temperature with the back of his hand like an overprotective mother. "You're still too warm. Did you take your antibiotic?" Reno nodded, drinking his juice before Cloud noticed that too. And then his tea. Sometimes, it was just easier to head that off at the pass. "I've noticed it too, like a hum of static electricity or interference, like you'd get if a radio isn't quite tuned right. Makes my hair stand on end."

"Well that's one mystery solved." He planted a soft kiss into Cloud's fluffy spikes.

"What?"

"Never mind, babe." He was growing tired again, but sleep was not exactly appealing to him. "What's that noise?"

"Fucking cat's into something. Let me see." Reno instantly missed Cloud's warm weight in his arms. He rolled over and was flirting with the drowsiness when he heard Cloud fighting with the cat, then a funny feeling ran through his brain like a free fall. "Well what have we here?"

Reno opened his eyes to see Cloud holding his EMR in one hand and in the other, the mangled remains of a Screamer. "How did that get in here?"

"Hell if I know, my guess is it was tossed onto the balcony when they were throwing them around the first night and asscat here dragged it in for a toy. It was damaged when I found it and ah…further damaged it. Which could be why all it was giving you was fucked up dreams instead of voices in your head."

"Why not you? All you got was edgy, you said"

"I'm not sick and drugged within an inch of my life. It probably made you more susceptible to the effects. I'm taking this to Tseng." Cloud put it in a plastic grocery bag, taking care to handle it as little as possible. He grimaced as though it were made of rotting flesh. "You get some sleep. You too, Beetle." Beetle licked his ass and shot Reno a look of pure satisfaction.


	3. Chapter 3

Mystery Chapter 3

* * *

He woke to rain. At first, he thought it was another dream but when he opened his eyes, it was actually raining. As an added bonus, he didn't feel like he was burning with fever anymore.

"Shhhhh. Your fever broke while you were sleeping. Did you have any bad dreams?" Cloud wiped his face with a cool cloth, then held up a cup of water. He shook his head. Gods, he was exhausted. Another sip.

"Tseng called. They caught the bad guys or, more accurately, this round of bad guys. That's the good news. Bad news is that the blueprints for making these things, the technology for upgrading them even, is still out there. Welcome to the brave new world."

"Great! Next you'll tell me we get the cat for another week." Reno didn't know how to feel about it all. On one hand, he was relieved; his dreams had rattled him more than he could even describe. The less danger Cloud was in, the better. On the other hand, it all seemed a little…anticlimactic. He was not a man accustomed to sleeping through the final battle. Though the alternative was…coughing them to death? Drowning by phlegm? If he felt less like shit he might even miss his manly dignity.

"No, the cat goes back on Tuesday. You want me to call in some delivery? Sushi or something?"

Reno tried sitting up. It worked. He thought he might try standing next. "Sushi sounds awesome. Thanks for putting up with me. I can't be the best patient."

"I'm sure I'm worse. Get out of bed so I can change these sheets, they're a sweaty mess and for once, we didn't have any fun making them that way."

"I'll grab a shower in the meantime. I smell."

Reno stripped and stepped into the shower. Damn Cloud for making that sweaty sheet comment. His mind hadn't missed the sex until that moment, being half off his gourd with fever, but obviously his body had. The thought of Cloud stretching across the bed to hook the corners of the fitted sheet over the mattress, that firm ass in the air…gods. Reno groaned. He made quick work of his long hair and was in the middle of soaping up the rest of his body when a very naked Cloud slipped in beside him, heat simmering in his eyes.

"How are you feeling? Tell me to get out of the shower if you're too tired."

"Get out of the shower….and I'll kill you." He leaned down to kiss Cloud for the first time since he'd started coughing. That made it a week, at least. He deepened the kiss, leaning back into the cool tile. Still weak, he let Cloud work him, with his hands, with his mouth. It was good. Cloud's hand was around his shaft, alternating rough and gentle strokes so that Reno's hazed brain couldn't construct any defenses against it; the sensations were making spots form in his vision. The other hand was snaking around to his ass.

"Want to move to the bed?" Cloud whispered. Reno nodded; he was beyond speech and nearly beyond standing, and it had nothing to do with recent illness. He used the last of his motor skills to shut off the water.

They didn't bother to dry themselves, falling on the bed wet and nude and hungry. Reno ground his erection up into Cloud's and gasped a little with pleasure. That seemed the extent of his communication skills. It proved sufficient.

Cloud raised himself up to reach the lube. Reno took the opportunity to spread his legs a little wider to provide his lover better access. It was nice to lie here, really, and let Cloud do all the work. Strong warm hands roamed over his sensitive body, allowing him to be a little lazy this one time. He lay back into the pillow and let his lover have his way with him. As if reading his mind, Cloud returned to Reno's mouth, kissing and sucking at it until its owner was half mad with lust, stopping to gaze at him with raw hunger. Sometimes Reno swore that Cloud could bring him to his peak with his eyes and kisses alone.

"Gods…just fuck me. I'm not a well man, you know."

Cloud grinned again, pressing lubricated fingers up into Reno's ass until he nearly wept from need, then slicking his own shaft and entering him. His own groan, then, was one of relief. He stroked Reno's thighs with a touch so gentle it was nearly a tickle, but Reno didn't laugh. He arched off the bed in near agony; with the lightness of Cloud's touches and the slowness of his thrusts, his sanity was slipping from him and he didn't even mind. Cloud turned that soft slow touch to his lover's aching cock then and Reno lost his fucking mind.

He sat up then, holding Cloud to him, riding him from beneath with a kind of madness born of need, of nightmares that hadn't come true, of love and gratitude and a thousand things he couldn't have put into words, but he could put into his body. Cloud pumped him then, hard, both of them approaching their climax and crying out with it. When it was done, Reno kissed him, rough, panting.

"I thought you weren't a well man."

"You fucked me into complete insanity. Not for the first time, damn it." He winced with hypersensitivity when Cloud pulled out of him. Cloud even got up to bring him a warm towel to clean up.

Maybe being sick wasn't so bad after all. That is, when he was no longer actually sick.

"Can I tell you something I hardly ever tell anyone?"

"Mpfh." Cloud was nearly asleep. One of Reno's less endearing qualities was his fondness for midnight confessions.

"I really don't like cats. You know, you tell people that and they look at you like you're a monster. Drop a plate on Sector 7? Man, we all did things we wish we hadn't, express remorse, move on. Hate kittens? What kind of sick fuck are you? I just don't get it."

"He did find the Screamer, Reno."

"He probably dragged it in here to begin with. You think it's because they cut his balls off?"

Cloud considered smothering his boyfriend with a pillow and thought better of it. "We only have three more days and for what it's worth, I don't like cats either."

"I love you."

"I love you too." It occurred to Cloud to wonder why Reno hated cats but he didn't want to know badly enough to sacrifice sleep for it, and what this had to do with neutering and ass licking.

"Cloud?" Gaia save him, where were those narcotics?

"Yes, Reno?"

There was no response. Cloud looked up and saw his lover sound asleep, mouth open in a silent snore.


End file.
